This invention relates to an electric cooking appliance and, more particularly, to an arrangement for detachably holding a cooking grid on a cooking appliance.
In the manufacture of broilers, grills, waffle irons and the like, it is conventional to provide a cooking grid which may be removed from the appliance for cleaning. Cooking appliances of this type have included a number of different types of latches and spring clips which engage the cooking appliance housing and the grids in a number of different ways to hold these parts to each other and in order to prevent their inadvertent separation while food is being cooked and moved on the grid. While the spring clips and latching arrangements have been constructed and shaped in a number of different ways for holding the grids on a cooking appliance, it is especially desirable that the latching arrangement be constructed so that it may be readily and conveniently operated without providing detailed instructions to an operator. It is absolutely necessary that the latching mechanism securely hold the grid on the cooking appliance while the appliance is being used with an upper cooking grid being held positioned upside down on top of a lower cooking grid. It is also desirable to provide a latching mechanism which may be manufactured at relatively low cost, and thus, it is most important that the latching mechanism include relatively few parts which may be readily assembled to each other to reliably hold the cooking grids on the cooking appliance.
In a prior U.S. Pat. No. 2,903,959, to E. A. Wagner et al., dated Sept. 15, 1959, and assigned to the same assignee as the present invention, two different metal clips are disclosed for holding cooking grids on a combination grill and waffle iron.
This invention is concerned with a generally similar cooking appliance which is provided with a removable cooking grid and, more particularly, with a unique reliable low cost construction for securely holding the cooking grids on the appliance.
Accordingly, it is a primary object of my invention to provide an improved grid latch construction which may be readily operated to reliably hold cooking grids on a cooking appliance.
It is a further object of my invention to provide a grid latching mechanism having relatively few parts which may be readily manufactured at relatively low cost.